European regulators escalate Big Tech enforcement with fines and probes

European regulators have moved from rule setting to blunt enforcement, opening probes, conducting raids and levying multimillion-euro penalties against major technology companies as officials push the bloc’s digital rulebooks into practice.

The European Commission and national authorities have cited both competition and content risks in recent actions. Reuters compiled a factbox of EU moves on Feb. 6, 2026, noting that X was fined 120 million euros in December as “the first sanction under the Digital Services Act,” that French police raided X’s offices on February 3 and that the commission said on January 26 it would investigate Grok, an AI chatbot, over whether it disseminates illegal content such as manipulated sexualised images. The Reuters factbox was compiled by Paolo Laudani, Alessandro Parodi, Charlotte Bawol, Olivier Cherfan, Enrico Sciacovelli and Olga Sawczuk in Gdansk, with editing by Alexander Smith.

Regulators have signalled a broader pivot. On January 4, 2026, EU officials “signaled a 2026 pivot from rulemaking to strict enforcement of the DMA and DSA,” Brussels lawmakers and officials told an outlet that also reported that the X fine prompted diplomatic blowback including an alleged U.S. visa ban on ex-Commissioner Thierry Breton and renewed tariff threats from President Donald Trump’s team; that account is attributed to the outlet and includes the outlet’s disclaimer that the commentary was the author’s opinion.

Competition authorities are simultaneously pressing antitrust cases. Finance/Yahoo reported that “the Commission hit Google with a 2.95-billion-euro ($3.46 billion) antitrust fine on September 5 for anti-competitive practices in its adtech business,” and documented a string of recent rulings and challenges that have kept Alphabet under scrutiny. Reuters also reported that the commission opened a probe in December into whether Alphabet’s use of online publisher material and YouTube content for artificial intelligence purposes breaches EU competition rules.

European enforcers are not only targeting market power but also procedural behaviour during investigations. A firm newsroom analysis published on Sep. 15, 2025 documented an unprecedented European Commission fine of EUR 172,000 for incomplete information in an antitrust investigation and linked that sanction to a wider trend. “The European Commission (EC)’s EUR172,000 fine tallies with a step up in enforcement by antitrust authorities globally of procedural breaches by companies during antitrust probes,” the piece said. It added that authorities “will seek to deter inaccurate, misleading or incomplete responses by taking a strict approach to clear breaches. Sanctions are not just a theoretical possibility: antitrust authorities across the globe are ramping up enforcement of these procedural violations.”

The same analysis recounted that in July 2025 the Italian Antitrust Authority fined Ryanair EUR 1.34 million for providing inaccurate or incomplete information in an abuse of dominance probe, finding the carrier “had failed to provide internal strategic documents—business plans and other relevant presentations—that were in its possession.” The report says those documents surfaced after dawn raids on Ryanair’s Dublin premises; Ryanair had claimed “that it did not prepare business plans for Italy or other countries, and that strategic decisions are taken informally and not documented.”

For technology companies the message is clear: Europe intends to test the teeth of its new digital laws and to hold firms accountable for both substantive breaches and procedural lapses. That enforcement push raises fresh legal and political tensions as regulators apply the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act to content moderation, AI and adtech business models while national authorities pursue classical competition remedies. The result is a regulatory landscape in which fines, probes and fast-moving investigations will shape how global platforms operate across Europe.